Myst (Nintendo 3DS) Review

Thirteen million people cannot be wrong, and they certainly are not, with Myst proving to be an extremely engrossing experience. It may not be as accessible as the likes of other PC-oriented adventures, such as Monkey Island or Broken Sword, but it does not mean there is not just as much fun to be had with what can only be described as an 'abstract' take on the genre. Anyone that played something like Zork Nemesis in the past will be more at home with Myst and its lack of narrative to draw the story along, with more of a focus on obscure puzzles that leave everything up to the imagination and creativity of the player's mind as they travel, step-by-step in first-person mode, across six worlds, with more than 80 hours of gameplay for those that explore every corner of the in-game locations.

As with past ports of Myst, this 3DS edition also includes the RIME Age that never launched with the original PC version, expanding upon the already intriguing storyline. This time, however, it is all delivered in auto-stereoscopic 3D that, whilst not imperative, adds a surprisingly deep effect to proceedings. There are two killers right from the off, though; the first is that the audio compression used makes any music or voice work sound extremely poor, especially through the already weak 3DS speakers, whilst the second is that the Touch Screen is not used for movement around the world.

The latter of these issues is the major worry, and when first tried pre-launch was hoped to just be a case of the game still being 'in-progress.' Sadly, that was not the case at all, and despite requests from those providing feedback on such a matter, the advice was not heeded. The way things work is that the Circle Pad is used to move the on-screen cursor around, highlighting areas of interest before clicking on them to trigger an interaction. Smooth movement around the screen would have been somewhat acceptable, but instead the cursor defaults to the centre of the top screen when the Circle Pad is untouched, meaning that the little visible hand pointer jerks around the screen inaccurately, flicking to its neutral position whenever the controller is let go. It makes for some extremely painful scouring of scenes due to the imprecision. The method might have been more acceptable if the stylus had been used, but as it is, accurate positioning of the cursor adds unnecessary frustration to proceedings and if the thumb slips off, the position resets and the painstaking process starts again.

With the nature of Myst's puzzles, wandering around, jumping from static image location to the next, picking up vague clues, solving riddles, and exploring the surroundings to get the most out of what is more of a journey than a traditional game, having a suitable control system is vital. Many will sadly play Myst on 3DS and, due to the lack of intuitive controls, will likely not bother to help The Stranger traverse the mysterious island of Myst in the hope of figuring out exactly what the paranoid Atrus is actually going on about or what his other-worldly book reveals in terms of catastrophic historical events.